Review the game you finished recently.

So what was the last game you finished, as in played trough it's campaign, and how did you like it?

I intend this thread to have a place where everyone posts their thoughts of the game they just finished, because if you post it in the game's original thread it's hard to find. But here if you search for a game's name in the thread you'll most likely get a honest opinion on the game.

At least that's what I'm hoping for. So review away. It doesn't matter if it's one line, or a thousand. Or if you give it a score or not, anything goes as long as it's about a game you finished.

It is exactly 210 days since I last finished a game so you can say that this was not my year as far as new game releases go. But at least I have Fallout 4 to look forward to.

But Mad Max. Everyone knows the story, I don't need to introduce the world. But I want to mention the recently released movie, that in my opinion was very good. The only negative thing in it was Tom Hardy, who was terrible as Mad Max, trying to imitate Christian Bale, or sg. But thankfully the movie wasn't only about him, not at all. But I don't want to dwelve into the intricaies of the movie that much, since I need to discuss the game here. So as a forethought I believe that the game is just as good as the movie was, if not better.

Of course the story is not an epic masterpiece with twists, but it gives a solid background for the gameplay. It starts out with Max getting into an unprovoked fight with the leader of Gas Town, Scrotus. And as a direct consequence he looses his ride, and his possessions, and barely escapes with his life. The Interceptor gets scrapped, so he needs to get a new wasteland roamer. This is where another key character of the game comes into play: Chumbucket. The hunchback master mechanic, who does his job with a religious devotion. And he had an idea in his head about the ultimate car, the Magnum Opus, for years, just didn't have anyone to help him build it. So together you start scavenging the wasteland and slowly building up the Opus, taking on any mission from any Warlord who can help you improve your car in turn. That sums up the basic story without any spoilers. I just want to add one more thought as I've read a ton of criticism about the ending, which I have to kindly disagree with. The ending perfectly fits in with Mad Max's world, and style, I couldn't think of a more fitting end for this gritty wasteland anti-hero.

The game lets you roam free within the area of Gas Town's proximity, which is divided into four areas, each area overseen by a local warlord. But of course at the start of the game Scrotus' influence is very significant in the whole territory. So the main goal of the game, to lower this influence to allow the locals more freedom without the grip of Scrotus. It's possible to completely eradicate the Scrotus presence in each area by dismantling all of his bases, sniper towers, scarecrows, convoys, and minefields. So you can say there is plenty to do. And don't for a moment think that this turns the game into a grindfest, because it doesn't. (except for minefields but I come back to that later) All of the enemy bases are completely different, there is not one bit of map reused in this game anywhere. And they were really creative with the design too. Every base is a new challenge, and a new adventure. And destroying scarecrows (which are huge metal structures erected to represent Scrotus' authority), and sniper towers are really fun and satisfying, either by driving/flying into them, or with the harpoon upgrade, or simply blowing them up with a can of fuel.

The areas in the game can be revealed by using strategically placed balloons to fly up and scout out the area with binoculars. You can say they stole the idea from Far Cry 3, but who cares. Copying good ideas and making them even better is not a problem, originality is overrated.

The strongholds of the warlords you work for can be improved in the game with various upgrades, that all give you bonuses. Like filling your health, water, fuel, or automatically collecting scrap from destroyed enemy vehicles, or revealing scavenging locations in the area. So it's advisable to build them as soon as possible to benefit, especially the scrap crew.

The gameplay has two key aspects, on foot combat and driving. The on foot combat uses a combo system, where you just have to pound the enemies until they die, and evade or block when necessary. But it's really satisfying, the only problem is that you can max out all your abilities by halfway into the game, making hand to hand combat child's play. It becomes so easy that you can waltz into a room with 30 enemies and still walk out victorious without breaking a sweat. But that doesn't take anything away from the fun.

The car combat however is more interesting, you can simply ram enemies, or use the harpoon, shotgun, or thunderpoon launcher, to take down enemy vehicles. And there are additional upgrades like flamethrowers or grinders. But even with the biggest, baddest armour your car takes damage fairly quickly so you always have to be on your toes to avoid taking ramming damage from enemy vehicles. But if all goes to shit, you still have the option to stop and make Chumbucket repair the vehicle on the spot, since he's always riding with you handling the harpoon, and thunderphoon. The problem is that you have to get out of the car to distract the enemies to allow him to make repairs. And they will try to run you down mercilessly. So it's advisable to stop where you can run into some ruins forcing them to follow on foot. You also have a sniper rifle in the car that you can use to snipe enemies from a distance, you can even have Chumbucket drive while you're taking down enemies from the back. And you can also call him with a flare gun if you manage to get too far away from your ride. For example coming out on the other side of the mountain after using a zip-line, or simply falling off a cliff in the heat of the battle.

The standard money in the game is scrap, that you use to buy any upgrade, even skills. So you unlock new skills/upgrades by lowering the threat, and finishing missions, and you buy them with scrap. So you need all the scrap you can find, there is never enough. For example the best engine upgrade costs 4300 scrap. And picking up one piece of scrap usually brings 5-10, occasionally 20 units. So picking up every piece is very important, and taking over bases is too, because friendly bases give a steady flow of scrap income, the more bases you have the more you get. Another aspect of upgrades are griffa points, which can be used to upgrade your character so you consume less fuel, extract more water from water sources, etc. I don't want to list every possible upgrade.

In a car game it's always very important for the car physics to be good, and here they are pretty good. Of course it's no simulation, but the car mostly behaves as a car should (expect when airborne, but that's not too much of a problem).

I also have to mention side missions (or wasteland missions as they call it here) that are often more interesting the the main story missions. They're fun distractions, like having to find a subway train and run it out of the tunnel. They're mostly fetch missions, but they're still fun, unlike DA:I.

The graphics are a bit above average, but the design and environmental effects makes up for it greatly. The level designers did a great job on the entire map not just on the bases themselves. Especially the storms, that come with tornado like winds, with all kind of debris flying around, hurting you if you get hit. So the game advises you to seek shelter when a storm comes. But there is a but. It's not just random debris that flies around in storms, but muthaloot boxes, that each contain 300 scrap. So it's rewarding if you can snatch them out of the wind.

There were some minor bugs in the game, but nothing game breaking, that is up until they released patch 3, witch they managed to do so with such a huge bug included, that brakes the game by disabling access to the map. And without the map it's impossible to do anything but main story missions, and you can't even fast travel. Basically braking the game, and there is no fix as of yet. So as much as I want to recommend the game, hold off until this issue is fixed.

Let's mention the negatives of the game.

First it's the aforementioned minefields, which you have to clear a lot of to get access to some upgrades, or if you're a maximalist. This is the only part of the game that is a grind, and an annoying one at that. You have to leave behind your car and drive around with a weaponless dog shed, I mean buggy with a dog cage in the back. Because you need the dog to sniff out mines. If you were not lucky enough to find all minefields while driving around with the Opus, then you have to drive around aimlessly with the dog until he starts to bark, indicating that there is a minefield nearby. Thankfully he can detect them from a fairly great distance, but I still had to drive around for 10-15 minutes sometimes until I was able to find some hidden minefields. And finding them is not enough, you have to use the dog to get near each mine, and when you get close enough the dog will start yelling, and the mine gets revealed, at which point you have to get out of the buggy, walk to the mine and defuse it by hand. And this repeats 3 times at each minefield. And the game has about 30 minefields in it (I didn't count it exactly).

The boss enemies of the game, aka top dogs. The developers paid so much attention to make every base and hell hole in the game unique, and then they make every boss in the game use the exact same fighting style. Which is a shame. This makes fighting them after the second encounter a predictable, easy routine. The only exception from this rule is one of the bosses at the end of the game, who fights with a different style. I imagine how much better it could've been if all top dogs were to fight differently and you needed to find the right strategy against them.

The main story is pretty short, but since this game is about having fun, this is not as big a negative.

+

extremely well designed gameplay

game mechanics work perfectly

graphics design

huge area to explore

good driving physics

level design / no copy&paste

lots of things to do, that doesn't get tedious

-

clearing minefields

repeating top dogs

you max out your skills too quickly making the game too easy

few main story missions

there are no hidden gems or surprises in the wasteland all you can hope to find is more scrap

the choice of car chassis has absolutely no impact apart from visuals, the big box will perform exactly the same way as the sports car body if you apply the same upgrades to it

Scoring:

graphics : 8
story : 5
atmosphere/mood : 8
gameplay : 10
controls : 9

final score : 8/10

I highly recommend this game, just hold off until they fix the map bug.

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW
I really like the AOE Shaman in this game I played it a year ago my save was deleted some way Started a new character I'm level 18 now really a fun button mashing game. If you play it on a big monitor like 27" IPS it really pops the colors out and looks amazing. Really want to try a 1440P with this game someday.
Posted September 23.
Visibility: Public
Language: English

I beat Anomaly: Warzone Earth a few days ago. It was good, but I experienced some weird bug where it kept reseting my progressive when Id leave the game for work or whatever so it took me way longer than it should have so I ended up beating it on casual just to get it over with which left me a tad unsatisfied.

I think they took a concept that hadn't been done before and did an admirable of implementing it, though its a pretty short game.

7/10

Baldurs Gate: Enhanced Edition

I liked it but I had to cheat to beat it. My characters were pretty high like lv 4 spells. There's a point where I felt like I was going circles and things where starting to feel redundant. I think towards the end there's a sewer that has a cool undercity, but there's nothing there, after that you have to go into this maze again nothing there, its just becomes a slog. I found that enemies and artifacts just petered out towards the end then the file boss is just obnoxious.

8/10 most it was fun and amusing but the fact act was disappointing.

I experience this kind of save loss thing a lot and it drives me crazy, where I'll play a game for a while take a break couple back to it a few weeks later my progressive will be gone or corrupted, GFWL is the worst about this. I would honestly subscribe a service that saved all your games in online storage.

Mad Max. It was okay, but got boring and repetitive. Awkward character and plot development. The whole thing felt disjointed and incomplete. They had some good ideas that ended up just being missed opportunities. For instance, what point was there to upgrading more than one stronghold when you could just fast travel to the single one you'd upgraded? The v8 sucked. Car armor was essentially useless, as were several other "upgrades". Every boss fight was exactly the same. The minefields were just plain awful, and those stupid damn storms were just plain obnoxious. There's some fun to be had in there if you can overlook some of the issues, but it definitely has problems Oh, and screw them for not giving me max's real jacket until I had beat the game. Really??

Also just finished borderlands tps. Same old borderlands as the other two. Still kinda fun, but unless they really change things up on the next game, it'll be another bargain bin purchase. I've never in my life played a game that had so many fetch quests, its beyond lazy and mind-numbingly repetitive. They make up literally 95% of the game.

Metal Gear Solid 5 was incredible in every conceivable way. I don't agree that the story is incomplete anymore. After I beat it, and browsing the r/MetalGearSolid subreddit I have a much better understanding and grasp on what happened. By-far the best game i've played all year. I don't think i've beaten anything else all year other than that and GTA 5.

Mad Max. It was okay, but got boring and repetitive. Awkward character and plot development. The whole thing felt disjointed and incomplete. They had some good ideas that ended up just being missed opportunities. For instance, what point was there to upgrading more than one stronghold when you could just fast travel to the single one you'd upgraded? The v8 sucked. Car armor was essentially useless, as were several other "upgrades". Every boss fight was exactly the same. The minefields were just plain awful, and those stupid damn storms were just plain obnoxious. There's some fun to be had in there if you can overlook some of the issues, but it definitely has problems Oh, and screw them for not giving me max's real jacket until I had beat the game. Really??

Also just finished borderlands tps. Same old borderlands as the other two. Still kinda fun, but unless they really change things up on the next game, it'll be another bargain bin purchase. I've never in my life played a game that had so many fetch quests, its beyond lazy and mind-numbingly repetitive. They make up literally 95% of the game.

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Mad Max is a perfect example of why a numbered score review system is flawed, it sounds perfect for people who deliver mail and packages for a living, but not for me.

The Witcher 3. 11/10. If I have to tell you why, you don't deserve to be a gamer.
Ass Creed Rogue. 7.5/10. Good story. A bit familiar but decent gameplay mechanics. Nice entry into Ass Creed Unity.
Destiny Taken King. 9/10. Lots of content. Had a blast with it. Post end game quests are fun. Now becoming a bit grindy but worth the monies.
Forza Horizon 2, first finale. 9/10. Love this game. It is an arcade racer dream on the XBONER.
Tales from Borderlands EP 1-4. 9/10. Hilarious game and love the story. Can't wait for next episode. Worth buying.

Mad Max is a perfect example of why a numbered score review system is flawed, it sounds perfect for people who deliver mail and packages for a living, but not for me.

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Are you suggesting that mail-men need less intellectual games? That must be offensive. And your logic is flawed anyway. The last thing people doing tedious and repetitive jobs need is a repetitive and tedious game.

You can dislike the game all you want but don't try to paint the people liking it as stupid.

Awkward character and plot development. The whole thing felt disjointed and incomplete. They had some good ideas that ended up just being missed opportunities. For instance, what point was there to upgrading more than one stronghold when you could just fast travel to the single one you'd upgraded? The v8 sucked. Car armor was essentially useless, as were several other "upgrades". Every boss fight was exactly the same. The minefields were just plain awful, and those stupid damn storms were just plain obnoxious. There's some fun to be had in there if you can overlook some of the issues, but it definitely has problems Oh, and screw them for not giving me max's real jacket until I had beat the game. Really??

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Listing a ton of adjectives doesn't really tell us much. What did you find awkward about the plot/character? And why did you think it is disjointed or incomplete?

It might not be important to build a maggot farm or water storage for each stronghold, but the rest of the upgrades all had local effects. If you didn't notice that, then you weren't really paying much attention to the game. But even the water/health/fuel refilling upgrades can be useful if you don't just fast travel everywhere all the time. This game is fun, the driving in it is fun, so why would I skip the driving part? If you don't like that, then there is really not much point in playing the game. And some wasteland missions are only given to you after upgrading the stronghold.

You can't turn your car into a tank, but the game is already easy as it is. So I don't see why is this such a big problem. And none of the other upgrades were useless. Each served a purpose. Of course if you didn't adopt your fighting style to use them, then of course they were useless, but that's not a flaw of the game.

The boss fights and minefields I give you those two, I did mention them as negatives of the game.

Are you suggesting that mail-men need less intellectual games? That must be offensive. And your logic is flawed anyway. The last thing people doing tedious and repetitive jobs need is a repetitive and tedious game.

You can dislike the game all you want but don't try to paint the people liking it as stupid.

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I don't know. You can take it however you want, but I notice with that game and games like it, it appeals to an audience who either enjoy or have a high tolerance for repetitive menial tasks that usually have some sort goofy reward for getting 100% of.

I have zero patience for that shit. I recall playing a bit of Batman Arkam asylum or whatever the first one was, and accidently finding some 1 of 10 trophy thing and if I collect all the whatever I unlock ..ooooor you can go fuck yourself and I'll just play something else.

I watched a bit of Mad Max and that awful total biscuit thing where he defends it saying its for an audience and thats fine, Collecting meaningless pieces of x and capturing X bases that don't further a narrative in anyway appeals to a group of people. I'm ok with that, but it does mean that giving it an 8/10 is flawed because thats an immediate 0/10 for anyone who doesn't need some sort of numbers based gratification.

You see it completely wrong. The game is not about beating numbers, or collecting X pieces of sg. The game is good because the game mechanics is good, the physics is good, and the fighting in it is fun. I tried to emphasise this.

I spend hours playing BeamNg, where there are absolutely no goals or point to it, not even numbers, and it's still great fun.

A lot of time has passed between when the first screenshots and news of the game started surfacing, and the actual release date. And among those informations there were a few that raised some concerns in me. But the teaser videos, and live action trailers, convinced me that I need this game on release date. So I pre-ordered the collector's edition, only to be disappointed by the fact that it came with no actual physical extras, I got the same plain DVD case, that came with any game. One thing you have to admire about the nineties is back then even budget releases of games came with full boxes, and a bunch of stuff. And now in the 21st century, even collectors editions have nothing extra to show for themselves. But let's get back to the game.

If I want to summarize the game in a few words I'd say it's Deus Ex: Lite. Or Deus Ex: For Dummies. It has almost everything the original game had, only with much less complexity, and with blatant obviousness. I'll elaborate what I mean by that later. The ironic thing is that the game only shows more complexity in regards, where I don't feel the need for it. Like augmentations. But more of that later also.

I feel that the designers wanted casual gamers to have the same experience as hardcore or enthusiast gamers had with the first game. So they made every choice (both tactical and story related) in the game, so obvious that it almost shouts at you. But with that they completely annihilated the real feel of the game. Now everything feels like that it's only there for your sake. The level design including. The choice between stealth, and head on fighting is so emphasized in the game that you can't get rid of the feeling that everything is only put there for your benefit. And it's actually very easy to use stealth in the game, even without augmentations like cloak and others that enhance stealth capabilities.

The side entrances, and secret passages, are more obvious than the "regular path" in most cases. It's impossible to miss or sometimes even avoid them. For example in Detroit the map is designed in such a way, that the "secret way" takes you from one end of the map to the other in a minute. While the regular way takes you trough a five minute maze.

In the first game you didn't use the secret passages for moving around the maps, but to gain access to bases, or compounds with less or no fighting. But after clearing the bases the regular way was much more convenient and faster to move around. Here it's the exact opposite of that. It's madness that the back door, offers a more direct route, than the actual direct route.

And I haven't even mentioned it yet that if there is a vent in the game, it will be a secret passage, without exception. It's so blatant when you are on a map, and there are no vents anywhere, except one single place where you need it to easily reach your target. Compare this to Deus Ex's map design, where most vents really felt like vents, many of them lead nowhere, or gave no tactical advantage to you. Like in level -4 of the unatco base, the whole map is criss-crossed by vents in the floor, and it really seems to serve a real purpose, apart from average Joe getting the "traveller achievement".

As I mentioned in some regards the game does offer "more" than the original, but this more is only more by quantity, and not quality. Example: You can put eight separate upgrades only on how much bioenergy you have and how quickly it is replenished. But at least that serves a purpose, there are a number of augmentations that are totally useless, and a waste of space. Like the stealth augmentations. (As I mentioned stealth is already child's play without any augs.) In the first game when you get an augmentation canister, it's like Christmas come early. Here you're being showered with praxis points, but most of the time I didn't even bother to spend them, since the augmentations are so useless.

They wanted to improve the inventory too, and they managed to make it even worse than in Invisible war. That's an achievement in itself. You have to be really patient to upgrade weapons in this game, you usually have to throw out almost everything from your inventory to do it. Since every upgrade even the smallest one for the most pathetic little pea-shooter takes up as much inventory space as a tank battalion. And of course to be able to use it, it must fit in your inventory. And if that wasn't enough, upgrades also work in a lucky dip system. So when you buy one, you don't know what weapon it will upgrade. So you throw away something in the awkward inventory screen to make space for the upgrade, only to realize thereafter that the upgrade fits on a weapon that you just thrown away to make room for it. And so you have to throw away something else, pick up the weapon that the upgrade is for, put the upgrade on, then pick up the weapon you threw away the second time. It's a torture, towards the end of the game I didn't even bother with upgrades.

And back to the bioenergy thing. In the first game, you could have thirty energy cells in a single inventory slot, and each cell recharged 75% of your bioenergy. Now just one single energy jar, takes up 4 spaces in your inventory. And it only recharges 50% of your energy if you purchased all upgrades. This basically renders the whole range of skills that consume bioenergy useless. Since you won't waste the already small inventory on energy jars, you'd rather carry weapons, since the augs aren't too useful anyway.

And then let's talk about weapons. There are plenty of weapons, there were plenty of them in the first game as well. All had some advantages and some disadvantages, but they all had their uses. Here the weapons that are good never have enough ammo, and the others are completely useless. There are many weapons I only used because I had no ammo for anything else. There are three good weapons in the game. The 10mm pistol, for which there is basically no ammo in the game. The sniper rifle for which you find no ammo in the first part of the game, and find a ton later, when it's not needed. And the grenade launcher, which is just too powerful in my opinion. The heavy gun seems like a pea shooter compared to it. Even civilians take 20 hits from this "not-so" heavy gun. And you can pump soldiers in the head with it for minutes.

All these mistakes seem minor, but in a franchise that put out a game close to perfection for the first time, they're unacceptable. Not that they would be acceptable elsewhere, but at least then I'd say it's their first try.

Even the story is lacking, you almost never feel, the tension, there are no decisions that affect later ones in the game. If you help someone in the beginning of the game, they never come back later to repay the favour like in DX1. There are even some cases when you help someone and you don't even get a thank you for it, because you never meet them again. Your decisions and actions have no consequences, you can massacre freely, noone ever questions you.

Apart from getting the "ghost achievement" there is really no benefit for the non-lethal approach. You don't even get XP for not killing people, but you get for shooting them in the head mercilessly. I find that very appalling.

The ending is pathetic. And not because of the actual ending. But because how the game offers you the final choice on a silver plate. I know it's boring that I keep comparing the game to the first one all the time, but what else can I do, if everything was better there? So in the first Deus Ex you had to actually work towards things to be able to choose a specific ending. Here you actually have four buttons in front of you, and they even explain it like you're a schoolboy, what each button will do, so average Joe doesn't have to think at all.

Another problem is, that as you well know this game supposed to be a prequel to the original. But the environment, the machines, the social state of the world, everything feels more futuristic, more like in the timeframe of Invisible War (DX2). The design of buildings, guns, computer consoles, the guard robots, all felt closer to present day in DX1, than in Human Revolution. So how could I believe that this takes place before that? Did they think that the weak Nicolette Duclare reference in the game will be enough to establish the time frame? I don't think so. I think it's bad design. Just because you can have better graphics today, doesn't mean you need to make everything look shiny and futuristic.

I finished the game on the hardest possible difficulty setting, but the first map of DX1 offered more challenges than this whole game. I only got stuck once at the second bossfight, but after purchasing a specific augmentation even that become easy. The first bossfight was actually very good, it really felt like a proper bossfight., but the final one was a joke. You have to press 4 buttons, then wait two minutes, voila that's it. There was another hard part in the game when I had to enter the harvester base. There were some invincible soldiers, that I could only kill by takedown. But I think that was a bug instead of a feature, that they can't be damaged by guns. Or if it's a feature then it's a stupid one, either way it's a negative thing.

+

Atmosphere (if we disregard that it supposed to be a prequel)

Even though it's lacking compared to DX1, or DX2, still an OK story

Graphics at a few places

There were no game breaking bugs (it's pathetic that this is a perk nowadays, it should be an absolute given)

-

Hand holding regarding choices

Map design is too obviously tailored to gameplay instead of being believable

The number of negatives listed like this seems overwhelming, the game is a disappointment, but only compared to my expectations. If I'd judge it alone comparing it only to current games, then it would fare much better. It's hard to step out of the shadow of a great predecessor, and this one failed to do that. It's underwhelming in every aspect compared to DX1, and in many things compared to DX2 too.

I admit, I was sold on this game even before it was released, I pre-ordered it, an act that I
don't do often with Console games, I was so convinced it will be good.

I started the game on day one after release, and finished the prologue, and I wasn't
impressed. It felt more like a rolling demo with occasional QTE breaks, rather than a fully
interactive game. This combined with a heatwave that presented all time high
temperatures meant the game fell to the sidelines for me. I couldn't get myself to sit down
in front of the TV in the 40C° heat.

I only started playing the game again a few months later, after the heat has subsided
somewhat. And fortunately it gets better. But I still wasn't entirely convinced. But before
delving too deep into the game's pros and cons I'd like to make a detour about the
premise.

As you probably all know, the game rides the waves of the fact that zombies became
extremely trendy recently. Everything with walking dead in it, receives ten times more
attention than before. So the premise is hardly original. Zombie virus fungus breakout
Soon followed by global government failures and anarchy. Nothing new there. After the
prologue we pick up the story 20 years later and you're a smuggler. In a community run
by the military, or what could be classified as military. Your job is simple, you smuggle
things in and out of the city. I have to mention that this part of the game feels exactly like
City 17 from HL2 that's run by the Combine. Even the military uniforms resemble the
combine soldiers. Of course this is not necessarily a bad thing, as I said many times
originality is overrated.

So you and your partner, after a little disagreement with the local street gang get into a
situation where, you agree too take on an unusual job. The job is smuggling out a 14 year
old girl from the city, into a firefly* compound outside the city. And this is where you're
introduced to the other main character of the game.

* The fireflies are the residential good-guys. Well when I say good, I mean
they seem to be the only ones concerned with more than their own survival. They're
actually looking for a cure for the infection.

Of course the journey is riddled with complications, typical of a story like this. Each time
your goal seems to be in reach, it turns out that you have to go much further. So you end
up criss-crossing the continental US back and forth.

And in the end you finally reach the firefly's base of operations, that you sought all along,
and... But I don't want to spoil it, so you'll have to play it to see what happens.

During this journey you of course encounter various forms of zombies, when I say various
I'm being generous, because there is only three types. The first one is in the first stage of
infection, these are exactly the same as zombies in other fiction. They mostly look
human, and they try to bite you, they don't have much brains just run at you like crazy.
Yes run, these are the fast kind, not the slowly stumbling hordes that are in The Walking
Dead for example.
The second type are in an excessive stage of infection, where the fungal infection is so
spread out, that it forms growths on the head of the zombie, effectively rendering these
zombies blind. This means that these are less dangerous, because you can sneak past
them if you're clever and quiet. The third stage is where the fungal infection is so spread
out that it forms an armour around the subject so it effectively becomes bullet proof. What
I don't get is why do they also become super strong, so when they reach you that's
instant death for you.

You also encounter highwaymen, and cannibals who pray on anyone passing by. Here I
need to dwell on something, that's not particular to this game but to almost every
post-apocalyptic story I've seen so far. Most of them seem to have these nasty groups,
that prey on the innocent and defenceless. What I don't get is how do they get their
numbers? At what point do they say, Hey let's not kill this one, let's recruit him instead. or
say: OK so now we have enough people, from now on we kill everyone who moves. It
seems to me that these huge tight groups of sociopaths have no way of forming
realistically, of course in every story we are presented with them when they're already at
full strength.

The story's best asset is the realistic character development, and the emotional roller-
coaster it presents. Especially in the second half of the game. It's easily the most
emotional story ever told in a video game, that I've seen up until Beyond Two Souls.

Let's move on to the game mechanics, and other technical stuff.

The game has an extensive crafting/upgrade system: you can upgrade your abilities, with
pills, like health, and such. You can upgrade your weapons by finding tools and
mechanical parts. And you can craft basic survival items with collected random household
stuff. This includes, Molotov cocktails, melee weapons, medkits, bombs. And here the
crafting is straightforward and easy to use, and it's beneficial to use as well. Every item
has a purpose. In fact this is the most well thought out crafting system I ever saw in a
game.

The game has a number of weapons, and some are better than others, but you're forced
to use each, because of the constant shortage of ammo. The only immersion breaking
aspect of the weapons is that for example you can easily upgrade a six shooter to hold 10
rounds. The options should've been tailored to the original weapons properties. Even if
they're not using real licensed weapons. Another thing I disliked is that the best weapons
and best upgrade options you only get access to at the very end of the game. I never even
had a chance to use a flame-thrower, because I only found it 10 minutes from the end of
the game.

There is also a stealth aspect, so on some levels it's better to sneak past enemies than
to take them all out. To this purpose you can utilize stealth kills, that only works on
humans, and the first type of infected. You also have a "focus" mode where you focus
your hearing, and this essential works as a see trough the walls device. But this is also
useful for ambushing enemies.

About the controls: It took me as long to bond with them as long it took for the characters
in the game to bond. That means at least five hours. But that's probably my fault, since
this is essentially the first shooter I played trough on a console. In the heat of the battle
I kept mixing up buttons, not because I pressed the wrong one by mistake, but because
I couldn't recall which action is assigned to what button. And I also couldn't hit a zombie
from point blank range with any firearm. I'm used to controlling shooters with a mouse
where you can do sudden quick moves, precisely. But here you have to take your time, in
aiming, and go slowly until I realized this I always shot all over the place but almost never
at my target. And I always ran out of ammo. It was so frustrating that I even broke my
controller mid game.

There were also some minor bugs in the game. Like clipping into objects, NPCs or
interaction options refusing to show up for minutes. At some point I was running around
for minutes until it finally showed up. Enemies materializing from thin air, and sometimes
disappearing into thin air as well. Enemies grabbing you from 10 meters away.
Sometimes when you try to distract the enemies by throwing a glass bottle, instead of
going towards the noise they all start converging on your position. When choosing "retry
encounter" from the menu the game sometimes puts you at the very beginning of the
level, instead of the last checkpoint, which means having to repeat parts you already beat.

One thing remains, the graphics. It's a very two edged sword, because I'm acclaimed to
the PC, and the 720p resolution without anti-aliasing on a a 51" screen, seemed awful.
And the graphics of the levels also varies from poor to perfect in the game. There are
some beautifully made parts, and some really neglected areas. But I'm sure that by PS3
standards, this is as good as it gets.

+

Story

Character evolution

Some level designs

Crafting system

Combat mechanics

You really fear with the characters for what will happen next

Top notch voice acting down to the last villain

-

The story is a bit predictable, almost every turning point can be seen from a mile away.

Really loved the gameplay, everything about it was incredibly fluid. I never found myself cursing the controls. It was always satisfying to fulton things/people out of the field. Like others, I really wished that the story was more fleshed out in the typical MGS fashion. I don't care how little sense it makes, it gives the game a sense of spectacle. I also felt some of the missions were a bit repetitive, as they all boiled down to extracting or eliminating someone.

I'm still working on a massive backlog (yet to find more free time), so no official reviews from me. But have you played the remastered version of TLOU M76? I'd give it a try, as it's MUCH better of an experience. If you've got a PS4 that is.

I'm still working on a massive backlog (yet to find more free time), so no official reviews from me. But have you played the remastered version of TLOU M76? I'd give it a try, as it's MUCH better of an experience. If you've got a PS4 that is.

At first I was sort of irritated as I was getting tired of always playing the allies. Kicking German butt (I'm German so I get sick and tired of fighting/killing my own people). Then after you beat the campaign, you realize you were just the allied hero. The game is actually about a hero from every front. Ok, so now the title makes sense. So after beating as an ally, you can then now play a German, and beat up Allied butt. You can finish another campaign with the German hero. Then with Brits, and so on. All having different game play elements and mechanics, so while similar, each campaign is different enough to keep the game interesting for the long haul. Just the allied campaign was worth the price of admission.

The game play is a real time strategy game with a single mission (and side quests) per map/board. Once you beat it you proceed to the next level. During the missions and before/after you get a cut scene playing out a story. Most issues i have with real time strategy games is that it ends up being a click fest, whoever can scroll around the map and click the fastest wins. But in Company of Heroes, I never felt this was not an issue. Most of the time you were ok with just creating a single large army and go conquering the map in a single group of units within an area. Only a few maps did you really need to separate and take over control points but no more than 3 groups of units.

If you are at all interested in WW2, real time strategy games, and you haven't played it yet, then you should get it!

It was one of the games available to Gold Live subscribers for no additional cost a month ago. I loved the game on PC and PS4, so I figured why the hell not. It will pad my gamerscore .

The game being locked to 30 FPS was a painful affair. In practice it felt more like 25 FPS most of the time. Some of the simple platforming sections were made difficult due to the long time between frames. Even on the PS4 with its variable framerate I was able to pop off headshots left and right with the controller. This was an effort in near futility on the XBONE, causing encounters to last nearly twice as long as they should have. Beyond that, the game sometimes flat out stuttered into single digit framerates, at which point I just put the controller down until it calmed down. There were four instances when the game locked up and needed to be restarted. How people could actually say with a straight face that this version locked at 30 FPS felt smoother than the variable framerate of the PS4 version is perplexing to me, if the people saying such a thing had actually played both versions.

The game itself was still fun when it worked. I still hope that RIse will have more actual tomb raiding in it this time around.

If I have to give it a numerical score, out of the 3 versions I've played (PC, PS4, XBONE), I rate this version a 5/10 (PC = 8/10, PS4 = 7/10). The technical issues and flat look when compared to the PS4 version takes off 2 points to make it just acceptable in my opinion. Unless you could get the game for no additional cost like I did, and you have a PS4 or PC, there is no reason to pick up the XBONE version... unless you're a masochist.

A decent top down view zombie survival game.
I just beat the story mode, so I guess that counts.

I love the diversity in the crafting and the array of different armor, weapons you can find/create. On hard mode, the game is very difficult and I love the feeling of helplessness when you're running out of food, water or sleep. (It truly sucks when you need all three, lol)

For the $5 I paid on the PS store for it, I definitely got my moneys worth by playing it.
I'll give it a 7.5 out 10.

Metal Gear Solid 5 was incredible in every conceivable way. I don't agree that the story is incomplete anymore. After I beat it, and browsing the r/MetalGearSolid subreddit I have a much better understanding and grasp on what happened. By-far the best game i've played all year. I don't think i've beaten anything else all year other than that and GTA 5.

Click to expand...

i totally agree, and for me it was GOTY material - but i feel like we only got 2/3's of a game, the third act missing? the unfinished story..

and so i looked it up on youtube, and behold the cut material in all its glory.

i don't think that a part of the game was for me to find the ending on youtube, fourth wall and all.

Well it's done, I've finished the game. It was worth every penny it cost, yet it's not perfect. It took me 6 months to finish Dragon Age Inquisition, but it took me only a month to finish this. And not because it has less content. But Because this game is much better. I just kept coming back for more until there was no more. While with Dragon Age I always came back reluctantly to do some chores, that's why it took very long to finish.

But enough about DAI, I don't want to compare it to that anymore because it's just not fair. They're not even in the same league. So let's see how it compares to Fallout 3 and NV then. Well if you are into RPG elements then you'll be disappointed. Otherwise it's more of the same, but better. You still earn XP, but there are no longer skills to spend on, instead there are perks. Each of which gives you an ability or improves something. Basically they can be considered skills just as well, because there are perks that define how hard lock can you pick, and how hard terminal can you hack. While others improve your ability to craft specific mods. So it's not bad. In fact it feels much more streamlined than F3's system, and much easier to figure out.

I was a fan of VATS in F3, and NV, because it allowed you to avoid the sluggish gunplay. But since in F4 the gunplay is improved by a huge margin, the VATS feels completely unnecessary, and any perks you use to improve your VATS performance is just wasted, since you can do fine, if not better without VATS. Because the gunplay is now done well in the game, it no longer feels sluggish or annoying, it's just like any good FPS.

But thankfully the game is not turned into a Bioshock Infinite because of this. It still remains a true RPG, and not an on rails shooter.

The game was and is criticised heavily for it's engine, and graphics. But honestly I don't feel it's deserved. Yes there are occasional glitches, but no more than in any other recently published triple A game. I played the game for about 60-70 hours in total, and only encountered one physics related glitch where a radscorpion catapulted into the air. Apart from that only the usual stuff that happens in every damn game almost.

And the graphics, is just not that bad, there are some very good looking places in the game. And I don't think we should be disappointed by the graphics. It's damn good for a game that is this open.

If the criticism is warranted for something it's loading transitions. That is sometimes not even an engine issue, but a level design one. Numerous times there are small areas cut off as a separate sections. That just doesn't make sense. The engine handles huge areas flawlessly, then why is a basement of a small building has to be a new area, with a loading transition?

And the loading times sometimes are very long, especially when you transition between huge areas.

The atmosphere is great, especially at the beginning of the game. But about halfway trough the story starts to get shallow. It no longer impresses, and the sense that there are forces bigger than you at work here is completely lost. Because no matter what faction you ally yourself with, it seems you're their go to guy for everything.

And without spoiling anything specific on the ending I just have to tell that it's the most underwhelming ever. I was like: "That's it? This would've been a side quest even in F3."

And even though you can ally yourself with any of the four major factions in the game, and play out the endgame with any of them. There are only two separate endings, the other three are carbon copies. The biggest problem is that no faction has a clear agenda, just some vague idea like "the benefit of humanity" but you just can't see what their plan is and how they want it to benefit anyone.

And the radiant quest system? It's bullcrap. Some of them are even bugged. That will keep sending you to the same place over and over again. But even if it's not bugged, they're so repetitive that you'll have had enough after 2 or 3 of each. And of course you can't clear out areas that are part of the radiant quest system. They'll constantly be re populated with enemies.

The map system is so fracked up, the world map feels too cramped. After you discovered a lot of places you won't even be able to see the quest marker on it. And the local map is even worse, even at the largest view, you can barely see anything but the room you're standing in, so it's totally useless.

I've finished the game with a tank character, but i plan to re-start it with a ninja stealth character without power armour. The ability to use different play styles and the exploration certainly gives the game replay value after finishing the story, but there is definitely no point to keep doing radiant quests after the main story is finished.

There seem to be some balance issues with weapons in the game, as the damage shown on each weapon seem to have a very weak relation to the actual damage they do. Often I can kill the same type of enemy with a 50DMG gun faster than with a 120DMG one. So the number is only good to measure how much benefit a mod will give to the weapon but not the actual stopping power. For example I can one shot kill a turret with a 70DMG 10MM pistol, but I can't do the same with a 150DMG Laser Pistol. And I thought mechanical things should be more resistant to ballistic attacks.

Well that seems all that I wanted to say about the game. There is one more thing left however.

The settlement building option. It just feels tacked on at the last minute to the game. It feels unrefined, and out of place. Like they just opened their internal levelbuilder partially. And called it a day. Many of the nuances are not explained and the building materials available to you are very limited and all ugly ass. Which made me completely ignore this part of the game, above what's minimally required to progress the story. I think the biggest mistake they made is that each settlement has it's own workshop supply, and what you store in one workshop is not automatically available at others. I know that it would break immersion, but that you have to learn what material you need to build something, then go to the other settlement, and then manually transfer all into your inventory, then go back and then build the thing you wanted is just too much hassle. Yes I know there is a perk that you can use to set up "trading" between settlements, but I was already half into the game when I learned about that, with a character that has 1 CHR. And you need a minimum of 6 CHR to be able to unlock that perk. And even then the game doesn't explain how to set up these trading routes exactly. So no. I keep to my original assessment the whole build shit option feels tacked on.

It would be somewhat better if settlers would actually start building things without you, but this way that you have to build even the most basic things yourself it's just not a good system.

Let's summarize things:

+

Atmosphere

First Half of the main story

Graphics at a few places

Modding system

Much improved gunplay

Many interesting places to explore

Well detailed areas

Some funny sidequests

Great variety of enemies to shoot at.

-

Bad dialogue system (no matter which option you choose the outcome is exactly the same, unless it's a persuade option)

Of course there are tons of mods already out for the game, but I was never a big fan of modding the gameplay on a first play trough. Unless it's something absolutely blatantly idiotic that needs immediate fixing.

As many fans of the original feared, this game doesn't have that many things common with the first game, apart from some characters appearing in it. To me that is not necessarily a negative thing, since I've had my reservations and fare share of resentment towards the gameplay of Origins.

The game became much faster, and more action packed, all to the dismay of hardcore RPG fans. The interface was simplified until there is almost nothing left to call as such. Which means in some places it is oversimplified sacrificing usability and intuitiveness. For example when you try to loot an enemy or chest. The list is so minimalist that it only shows three items at any given time. Even if there are 5 items in the chest, you only can see the first three. The only way to be able to see the rest is by picking up the ones you can see, even if those are completely useless things to you. But in the end I just looted everything and visited a merchant from time to time to get rid of the junk, so this is not that big of a problem really.

And you can't even choose your squad's equipment in the game. Hell you can't even choose the outfit of your own character. Ok I'm not telling the complete truth there, because you can equip new armor, but most of them look exactly the same. The only way I could make my character look somewhat unique is by editing my savegame and switching out my character's outfit with one of the NPC's that I thought looked cool.

I thought Awakening bore the marks of the developers of Mass Effect 2, well this one has trademark things from both ME1, and ME2, and not necessarily good ones at that. The main questline actually consists of re-establishing your family name and wealth for the most part of the game. And of course you do this by doing completely stand alone missions one after another, without barely any connection between them. Hence the similarity to Mass Effect 2. But the trademark it wears from ME1 is the re-re-re-re-recycling of maps. There were caves, and building complexes in the game, that I had to clear dozens of times, and each time the exact same map represented a completely different venue. I'm OK with reusing textures or other assets, or even a complete room, but the whole freaking map? And dozens of times? That's madness. "Well it happened like this Mr. prosecutor I'm telling you, he fell into the knife, and then he fell again twenty times."

The game is easier than the first one, which is a relief to me. But the fact remains that the outcome of battles still hinges 90% on pure luck. I say this because it happened, that for some reason I had to reload an earlier save, and the battle that I won easily just five minutes before turned into a bloodbath with my comrades falling. And I'm pretty sure I didn't lost my ability to play in the five minutes between the two attempts.

One more thing that I had more of, than what I would've liked is bossfights. And many times these bossfights seem neverending. I kill the bastard, but he always gets revived with full energy two or three times. Just make the damn health bar three times longer, but don't frack with me, if it's HP drops to zero it should die once and for all.

Another annoying thing is when the boss flies into a "safe zone" or I don't know what to call it, where I can't hurt it. But of course the boss can still attack me all he wants while the henchmen just keep coming at me. And another curious thing about bossfights is that their difficulty seem completely random. I would've expected the last bossfight in the game to be the hardest, but that can't be farther from reality. By far the hardest boss to defeat in the game is at about the middle. I had to try dozens of times before I went completely mad, and lowered the difficulty to casual. Which made it a walk in the park. So I don't know how they balance tested this game, if Normal = Impossible while Casual = Do nothing tactics wise and still win. OK the problem was only with some of the major bossfights, as difficulty during the game seem fairly constant, except for some spikes.

I enjoyed the story, and some of the characters are good, but I can't say the same about the others. Most has some kind of idiocy that makes me want to slap them in the face at some point(s) in the game. And I also didn't like the fact, that if you turn the romance option down just once for someone, you never ever get the opportunity again, even if it happened in the first third of the game.

And there were some inconsistencies in the handling of my imported save from Awakening It seems to me that the save import system doesn't work very well, or they didn't account for every possibility.

And I have to say that if you choose to play as a mage, then the whole story becomes pretty comical. They didn't adjust the story well enough to account for that. You're running around with a staff casting all kinds of spells, and no-one ever notices that you're actually a mage, while your sister just goes around worrying about getting caught. They either should've changed the story to account for the discrepancies or simply disallow you to play as a mage. They already restrict you to be a human, why not go all the way. Don't get me wrong I liked the story, but it just doesn't work if you play as a mage. So if you ever decide to play the game, do yourself a favour and play as a rouge or a warrior so it doesn't become comical.

Another thing I disliked is that the whole game takes place in and around one city. By the end of the game I was so tired of travelling the wounded coast for the thousandth time. And Kirkwall itself got boring very fast as well. That's why towards the end my playtrough almost turned into a speedrun I was so tired of the scenery. Just running towards the next quest marker without thinking.

The game didn't age too well. I remembered that the graphics was pretty good when it was released. But now nearly 5 years later, it looks almost pathetic.

+

Story

Fast paced combat

It has the potential for a second playtrough, to try different story choices

-

Oversimplified interface

Inconsistencies in the story (especially playing as a mage)

Too many and too long bossfights

Too few areas to explore

Re-used maps

The above two reinforce each other

Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 6/10 (for re-using the same maps, and ageing badly)
story/atmosphere: 8/10 (minus one for the mage problem)
gameplay/controls: 8/10

overall impression: 8/10

I didn't mention gameplay time. It was about 30 hours on normal, doing all sidequests, and companion quests. But not including the story DLCs. I don't think I'll ever play those since EA never bothered to lower their prices, they still cost the same as when they were released over 4 years ago. It seems to me that after the bad reception EA simply abandoned the game for good, not even bothering to put it on a sale from time to time.

When in fact it's not a bad game actually. I might not be popular by saying this but I enjoyed it much more than Origins. Both the gameplay and the story, but especially the squad banter.

hearthstone - i reached legendary with a paladin's deck. I played the game for 1 year and i keep playing it. one of the best card games out there for sure. tons of cards, but unfortunately it's so hard to get new cards. great gameplay and animations. i recommend you to play on tablet but this game is multi device friendly! cheers

Just played Ori and the Blind Forest.
I would rate this 9/10. Overall, a very visually appealing platformer. The game had a good story - can bring out your emotions. It had great graphics, beautiful music, nice scenery and good length of gameplay. A bit challenging and contains some puzzles. Some parts were painful though, such as when escaping from the Ginso tree. You can't save in the middle of the level, so you had to repeat the whole level if you messed up. Still, I think this game was worth the money and time.